Reflection on Principles of Business Process Re-engineering

Produce a log or a reflective journal which shows:

• An analysis of the principles of business change and business process re-engineering, and how they relate to your organisation
• A description and evaluation of the concept and application of workflow patterns and usability testing in your organisation
• An evaluation of three modelling tools used by you, and evidence of having tested a proposed processes through a modelling exercise
• A list and analysis of factors to be taken into account when evaluating the effectiveness of business processes

Within our pre-school we use processes daily and are always looking to improve our setting and test processes. Business change is used within our pre-school to look at where we are, where we want to be, how we are going to get there, why we want to change and what measures will we need in order to succeed. I am in the process at present of completing an SDP, an SDP is a strategical development plan for the next coming year within pre-school, we look at what we want to achieve at pre-school and how we are going to achieve it. Looking at change management principles within an organisation can help you to support the people effected by change. During any kind of process communication must be used at all times in order to succeed.

Business process re-engineering is looking at your workforces and ensuring that your work force optimises the resources that you have available to you. Re-engineering is the redesigns of work flows within an organisation. When we look at business re-engineering we look to see how to get the chosen task done in the least amount of time, an example of this is Safeguarding. Safeguarding within childcare is paramount with everything you do the process constantly needs to re-engineered due to current changes and legislation, an example of this is, recently asking parents for permission or consent at our nativity play and also asking for no photos to appear on social media sites due to children’s identities being revelled. We then had to re-engineer our current set up to ensure this announcement was put in to protect the children.

Business re-engineering is an important part of rethinking and redesigning during the business process. Business improvement looks at key areas for change such a performance and then sets about to take drastic measures to enhance, speed, profitability, training, cost control and efficiency are measured.

Workflow patterns are specialised forms of design pattern for different perspectives for process aware information systems. Work flow patterns can be described as independent, interdependent or sequential. A method that can be used for testing these patterns is through usability testing, using real users and being observed by a researcher to see where they encounter problems. Scenario testing is a type of testing that can be used to test a product or process to highlight any problems they may encounter, the advantage of using this type of testing is that its real people being used for real situations or tasks and feedback can be given before a process is put into place, an disadvantage of this is that it’s not a true real life situation so would the feedback be any use to us. Another type of testing is hallway testing, using large places to set up and stop people asking them to give feedback on a product, this type of method has an advantage of the people being random so it’s very real like and people are put on the spot which could usually be very helpful and should reveal the truth, gaining better results. A disadvantage of this type of testing is that people are usually in a rush and will not want to stop to give feedback, it becomes a hard method by trying to attract people’s attention and get some results.

At pre-school I use usability testing by using trial periods of new business process ideas. When I first started at pre-school I changed the settings routine by adapting free flow play, we trialled it and spent a lot of time talking about it, looking at any weakness and talking about the benefits, the advantage of trial systems is that its testing the water before you make this change, it usually highlights any areas in need of tweaking.  A disadvantage of this is that sometimes it takes time to see a huge problem and by then it is too late and in pre-school sometimes there is no room for error, an example of this could be getting the ratios wrong by trialling a new process if this happened we would be in big trouble and could cause unnecessary stress and accidents on children in the setting. In our setting with

Modelling types that I have used to look at business process and change are; brain storming and critical path an analysis. Brains storming allows a lot ideas to be involved when creating a change or business process and allows you to put down the unthinkable, however sometimes this creates a bigger picture that has more problems when we only need a quick brainstorm to address an idea or change.

A critical path allows help to plan all the tasks that must be completed as part of the process. An advantage of this is that it has clear steps and addresses the tasks that need to be achieved, although a disadvantage of this is that you have to complete the steps in order, so step 3 can’t be completed before step 2.

There are many factors to consider when evaluating the effectiveness of a business processes. Are the processes more efficient and effective? Are they helping improve our organisations performance? Is it helping me be better connected with internal and internal customers and stakeholders? Is this new way more flexible and easier? Are the helping our business objectives?